


drove for miles and miles and wound up at your door

by Clones_and_gallifrey



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, High School, Panic Attacks, Prom, Unrequited Love, but not really, inspired by THAT tweet u know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-30 01:16:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12643176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clones_and_gallifrey/pseuds/Clones_and_gallifrey
Summary: ‘“Lonnie asked me on a date.”“Huh?” Hopper’s breath catches in his throat, and he stops still for a split second before he remembers that this has nothing to do with him. This doesn’t change anything, because Joyce is his friend, and nothing else. Because by June he’ll be out of here, and none of this will matter anyway.’It’s senior year, and between shared cigarettes, winter prom, and failing English class, Jim Hopper watches his best friend falling in love, or something like that.





	drove for miles and miles and wound up at your door

**Author's Note:**

> Hi please blame my friend Federica for coercing me into this but mainly this tweet from david harbour which basically killed me: https://twitter.com/DavidKHarbour/status/925041946992799744

His hand finds her shoulder after fifth period, after an hour of sitting at the back of Mr Kennedy’s stuffy classroom and squinting to try to read his shaky scrawl on the blackboard up front. The hallway smells of dust, the motes illuminated by ribbons of October sunlight streaming in through the windows.

“Joyce,” he taps her on the shoulder, the soft fabric of her blue sweater.

“Huh?” She spins around, hair flying.

Class ended five minutes early after Mr Kennedy lost his train of thought and dismissed them all instead.

“Wanna go?” He gestures at the window with a nod of his head, tapping the box of cigarettes in his jacket pocket.

“I have chemistry, Hopper,” Joyce points out, like that’s the end of it.

“Yeah?” He shrugs, like Joyce just told him there are clouds in the sky today. Just a meaningless observation.

Joyce glances back at her friends, huddled together a little way back, arms folded, waiting for her to catch up with them. And then she looks back at him and smiles, her whole face lighting up like it’s Christmas morning and she’s opening the gift she’s wanted for months. Hopper’s heart doesn’t do any kind of backflip at that smile, because he’s eighteen years old, over a head taller than Joyce, and he’s joining the army soon. There’s no way in hell that any girl is going to make his heart do _backflips_.

“You’re a bad influence on me, Jim Hopper,” she tells him, but she’s beaming. “Catch you up later,” she calls back to her friends, and follows Hopper in the opposite direction.

He smiles down at her, relishing these small, stolen moments they get to keep.

Joyce folds her arms and exhales as they walk away, towards the door to the back exit. They know the drill by now, down the steps and then they’ll circle around them and creep underneath, out of sight.

“So what’s new with you?” Hopper asks, pushing the heavy door open and letting her step out first.

“You do _not_ wanna know,” she rolls her eyes, tugging her too-short skirt down. The weather has really started to change now, an early October chill working its way through the air. Soon, it’ll be winter. Their last winter here in this school, in this town, of just being _kids_. Before everything changes.

“Try me,” he suggests, two paces ahead of her.

“Hmm,” she frowns, and Hopper pulls the pack of camels out of his left jacket pocket, feeling around in his right one for a lighter. “Lonnie asked me on a date.”

“Huh?” Hopper’s breath catches in his throat, and he stops still for a split second before he remembers that this has nothing to do with him. This doesn’t change _anything_ , because Joyce is his friend, and nothing else. Because by June he’ll be out of here, and none of this will matter anyway.

“We were supposed to go out last night, but he never showed. Must be his idea of a sick joke,” she digs into the pack of camels and pulls one out, jamming it between her teeth.

“I never figured him for your type,” Hopper comments, and it’s an _observation_ , not a criticism.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joyce snorts, words distorted by the cigarette.

“Well he’s… and you’re…” it’s choose-your-own-adjective, because Hopper doesn’t trust himself enough to pick any.

“Great, thanks. So insightful,” she quips, holding out her hand for the lighter. He doesn’t give it to her, igniting it himself and sparking both of their cigarettes with one clean sweep. _“God_ I needed this,” Joyce says, holding hers between two fingers, hair caught in the breeze.

“So are you gonna talk to him? Or just,” Hopper shrugs, “forget about it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t _know_. He’s not even here today.”

“Wow, Lonnie skipping school. That’s a totally new development,” Hopper deadpans.

“Funny.”

They stand in silence for a minute, lost in thought, watching through the gap between the wall and the steps at two freshmen in gym clothes in a heated argument under a nearby tree.

“What do you _mean_ , he’s not my type?” Joyce demands to know, squinting at Hopper. He fidgets, can’t meet her eye. They’ve been friends for long enough that they’re always honest with each other, that they can tell when the other is hiding something.

“I don’t know. He’s just not… that Jack kid you were dating last year, _he_ was your type.”

“He was sweet,” Joyce agrees, “but he moved away. His dad got a job in Texas or someplace.”

“Just… just be careful. But if Lonnie makes you happy, then that’s great.”

“I don’t know if he makes me happy yet. So far, it’s not looking good,” she muses, frowning at her feet before taking a long drag from the cigarette.

Somewhere above them, deep in the belly of Hawkins high school, the bell for sixth period rings, and they should both be making their way up the stairs and through the bustling halls, into their seats at opposite ends of the chemistry classroom. Neither one of them moves.

“It’s just chemistry,” Hopper says, wrinkling his nose.

“Who needs _chemistry_?” Joyce echoes. Somehow, Hopper knows they’re both thinking the same thing. They’re thinking about making a beeline for the parking lot, climbing into his beat up car and driving, just driving. Maybe go for milkshakes or buy a brand new pack of camels and smoke them on the hood of his car as the sky turns dark. He’s sure the car won’t make it cross country, but maybe it could make it to Chicago or the kids’ park, they could eat ice cream on the shores of Lake Windermere or sitting on a swing set ten minutes down the street. Anything to hold onto this bubble, this shelter from whatever their reality is right now.

They smile at each other, eyes all soft, and then Joyce stubs out the cigarette under the toe of her shoe, and Hopper does the same, and they walk side by side to Mr Atwood’s chemistry class. Joyce sits beside her best friend Molly, and Hopper pulls up a chair right behind Bob Newby, who is taking notes at the speed of light.

  


 

It’s not like they have the sort of friendship where they have to see each other every single day. They’re both busy doing homework and making plans, preoccupied with their own friends and their own problems. Hopper hears that Joyce and Lonnie are officially a _thing_ a couple weeks later, whispered rumours between two girls sitting behind him in Spanish class.

“So is that true?” He asks his friend Benny, who’s biting on the end of his pencil so hard that Hopper’s convinces it’s going to splinter.

“ _Jim_. There’s a big test tomorrow. Did you know about this?” Benny’s eyes are wild as he rounds on his friend.

“I don’t know Benny, that’s not important right now,” Hopper taps in the tabletop, attracting his friend’s attention. “Joyce and Lonnie. Are they dating?”

“Oh, yeah. I think so,” Benny stops chewing on his pencil. “She was wearing his jacket this morning. She’s in my history class, so I noticed.”

It stings a little, hearing that, but Hopper guesses that they must have resolved the whole not-showing-up-for-the-date thing. Guesses they’re happy together. He pushes away thoughts of the smiles Joyce shoots him which light up her eyes, the crease between her eyebrows when she frowns. He pushes them away because she’s not his girl, she was never going to be _his girl_ , not in this lifetime or any other. She doesn’t like him like that, and he hasn’t sorted his thoughts out enough to know if he likes her like that either. Besides, he’s moving far away at the end of this year. There are a thousand reasons why they would never work out. It’s just the barest flicker of a thought that he entertains in quiet moments.

  


 

Lisa Baker throws a party at the start of November to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. Her parents are out of town, and the front of her house is lit up with early Christmas decorations - an array of bright white bulbs. On the surface, Lisa is a _nice_ girl, and she styles her hair in the same way as the girls on the covers of pink magazines, wears perfectly pressed poodle skirts and flashes her white, straight teeth at anyone who looks her way. Hopper also knows that she regularly skips class to smoke under the steps and makeout with Alan Miles, but he guesses that the good girl facade worked a charm to convince her parents to leave for the weekend.

“Hey stranger,” Joyce pounces on him the second he’s through the front door, a cup of something red in her hand. The music’s loud, upbeat and fast, sickly sweet. “Long time no see,” she accuses.

“I saw you in chemistry yesterday,” he points out.

“You know what I mean.”

It’s not that he’s been avoiding her. He hasn’t, he’s not like that. He likes hanging out with Joyce because they’re friends, because she’s easy to talk to, because she _gets it_. It’s just that senior year is busy, and with the exception of class, wherever Joyce is, Lonnie’s right beside her with an arm slung loosely around her shoulders. Hopper has never exactly been on the best of terms with Lonnie.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Hopper asks, looking around, waiting for him to appear out of thin air.

“Out of town,” Joyce says, turning to walk through the throng of teenagers. “Come and get some punch.”

“I have to drive home later, I can’t.”

“Molly’s designated driver tonight, she drew the short straw. You can sleep on my floor. It’s not like my parents are ever home,” she shrugs, and Hopper can think of a million different reasons why he _shouldn’t_ sleep on Joyce’s floor, but the parts of his brain that matter don’t get the picture, so he agrees to it and accepts a heavy cup of punch from her.

She’s smiling _that smile_ again, and it’s freaking infectious, and within thirty minutes they’re buzzed and dancing to some old jazz record in the middle of Lisa’s living room, surrounded by sweaty, drunk teenagers all having the time of their lives.

“I’m glad we’re friends, Hop,” Joyce yells, but it’s still hard to hear her above the music.

“Me too,” Hopper tells her, and they’re both smiling and laughing and everything feels ok. There are couples making out around the edges of the room and someone’s standing on the coffee table and four boys are having a vicious pillow fight with the couch cushions and the girl in front of him is holding onto his arm and giggling so hard that her whole body is shaking and god, he’s going to _miss this._ He’s going to miss _her._

They wind up outside, not an hour later, sitting beside each other on Lisa’s back stoop, knees touching, sharing Hopper’s last cigarette of the pack.

“How are you doing?” Joyce asks, words slurring a little at the edges. She’s a few drinks past him, and a lot smaller, so he isn’t surprised.

“Right now?”

“Yeah. In general,” she shrugs.

He takes a drag and wonders how to answer her. “Pretty good, I guess,” he settles for, passing the cigarette back to Joyce.

She holds it carefully between her index and middle fingers, just like always, pushing her hair away from her face with her other hand. Some kid is throwing up in the bushes a little way in front of them, but Joyce is blowing shaky smoke rings into the sky and there are _so_ many stars out tonight. Hopper all but tunes out the retching.

They don’t talk about their plans for after high school, never have, probably never will. Hopper’s sick of talking about his plans for next year anyway, having had them determined for him by his dad, words growled at him across the dinner table, having repeated them to his teachers and his guidance counsellor and his friends. It’s not that he doesn’t want to join the army, because doing that’s going to get him far away from this sleepy town, going to let him do something that maybe matters. It was just never a choice, and there are plenty of other things in this world that matter more, that might have taken him even further away from Hawkins.

“What about you?” He turns to ask Joyce. She’s leaning on her hand, elbow resting on her knee.

“How am I doing?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. Things are fine,” she says, with all the enthusiasm of someone who’s agreeing to read a hefty manual on wallpaper.

“You wanna lighten up a little?” He jokes, accepting the cigarette back from her as she offers it.

“Screw you,” she punches him in the arm and then tilts her head back to look at the stars. “You ever think about going up there?”

“Up where? To the stars?” Hopper looks up again, taking in the stark white speckles of stars against the pitch black of the night.

“Yeah. We’ll probably all be living up there, on the moon, in forty years.”

“I don’t know,” he frowns, “what’s so great about the moon? No one’s ever even been up there to see it for themselves.”

“What’s so great about _earth_?” She counters.

“All my stuff is here.”

That makes her laugh, a bright, happy sound. The stars suddenly seem less important than ever.

“Hey, Hopper!” There’s a voice calling from the doorway. It’s Alan Miles, leaning out to call him. “We’re playing poker, you in?”

Hooper takes a second to catch Joyce’s eye, as she tears her gaze from the stars. They exchange a smile, and it’s slightly sad for reasons that neither of them can completely comprehend.

 

 

Everyone at the party is in high school, seniors and juniors and a couple of sophomores, so none of them have any money to bet on the poker game. Instead, the eight players play for drinks- you lose, you drink a whole cup of toxic red punch. Hopper isn’t bad at the game. In elementary school his father taught him how to play and then his grandfather taught him how to _win_ , but Alan’s mom used to work the casinos in Vegas so he’s the one who wins almost every round, accusations of cheating falling on deaf ears. By the end of the night, Hopper’s had enough to drink that he’s on a level playing field on the drunkenness scale with Joyce, who tugs him into the backseat of Molly’s dad’s car with far too many people to be legal. She sits half in his lap, someone’s elbow against his temple, someone else’s shoe making indents in his shin.

“You don’t come to enough parties lately,” she says, her tone accusatory, jabbing a finger at him so it nearly plunges into his eyeball.

“Sure I do. I come to tons,” he insists.

“Oh yeah? Name one?”

“Uh…” his mind is blank, filled with images of poker cards and Joyce holding his last cigarette like she’s in a movie from the 30s. “This one.”

“Doesn’t count,” she shakes her head vigorously, causing at least two people to object, her hair hitting them in the face.

The conversation continues when Molly pulls up to Joyce’s house, a narrow bungalow on the edge of the forest. She tugs him in by the wrist, checking quickly through the window that no one’s home. They aren’t, he knows they rarely are.

“We never hang out anymore,” Joyce says, closing the front door behind them. They step into her familiar home, a little messy around the edges, walls in need of a new coat of paint.

“Sure we do!” Hopper objects, following Joyce into the living room.

“Not like we used to,” she’s scrabbling at the couch, pulling up the pile of patchwork quilts stacked on the end and digging out the cushions.

“We just have different stuff going on, I guess.” He doesn’t question what she’s doing, just holds out his arms to receive the mounds of cushions and blankets.

“Growing up is _shitty_.”

“Sometimes it is, sure.”

“Ugh. Let’s go,” she turns and walks out into the hall, heading for her bedroom, wobbling a little on her feet. Hopper steadies her by the elbow, only letting her go when he’s confident she isn’t going to fall.

Joyce likes to refer to the state of her room as ‘organised chaos’, which means that to everyone else it just looks like a mess. The small size of the room doesn’t help. Her bed is never made, her desk is cluttered with stacks of paper and coffee cups, the chair is buried under a pile of sweaters, and the floor is barely visible beneath various items of clothing, books, candy wrappers, screwed up balls of paper, and - Hopper counts - three bowls with spoons in. He’s been in Joyce’s room plenty of times, is well acquainted with her organised chaos, but it’s never been _this_ bad before.

Last time it was anywhere close to as bad as this, as far as he knows, was last October, over a year ago, after a huge fight with Lisa had triggered _something_ inside of Joyce, leading to three days of staring blankly at a wall in her bedroom, ending with a panic attack so bad that it terrified him. He talked her through it, right here on the ground, hands clasped tightly together.

In return, she had smashed plates in the woods with him last winter after all of the stuff with his mom, pretending that she didn’t notice the tears tracking their way down his cheeks.

Hopper wonders if Lonnie’s leather jacket hanging on the back of the bedroom door has anything to do with the increase in the volume of _organised chaos_.

“There,” she’s dragging pillows and blankets from his arms and from her bed and arranging them on the floor, laying them right on top of the assortment of stuff, covering it over.

She flicks out the light and falls backwards into the pile of pillows, Hopper standing still and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they do, seconds later, he finds her curled into a ball on her side, knees drawn up to her chest. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to, just collapses onto the pile beside her, pulling one of the blankets over the top of them. She reaches for his hand, hers icy against his palm, twisting their fingers together, and leans her forehead against his shoulder, breathing what sounds like a sigh of relief.

“How are things with Lonnie?” He asks, voice barely above a whisper. The small, selfish part of him wants to hear her say they’re terrible, that they’re breaking up, that she can’t stand to look at him anymore. The bigger, wiser part of him just wants to hear that she’s happy.

“They’re ok,” is her response, words spoken into the sleeve of his t-shirt.

“Ok?”

“He’s sweet. He isn’t like everyone thinks he is. Well, he _is_ , but he’s nicer too. He really cares about me, y’know?” She tightens her grip on his hand. Hopper hums a noncommittal response. “You know Lisa has a huge crush on you, right?”

“Huh? Lisa Baker?” Hopper asks, amusement evident in his voice.

“Yeah. Lisa. _Beautiful_ Lisa,” Joyce teases, a smile just as evident in her voice.

“Huh!”

“Yeah.”

“I thought she was dating Alan?”

“No. They just makeout sometimes.”

“Well she can keep her crush. I’ve got too much going on right now,” he reasons out loud. What he doesn’t say is that all of the logic he’s applying to convincing himself he doesn’t have a crush on Joyce should also be applied to all of the other girls in Hawkins.

Because he’s leaving soon, and maybe he’ll never come back. Because they’re all busy in their own heads. Because they’re too young for any kind of relationship to last long term right now anyway. The reasons apply to every girl he knows, but the gnawing sadness doesn’t. That’s reserved for the girl with her hand in his.

  


 

“Hey,” Joyce catches up with him at the end of November, a few weeks after the party.

Weeks of smiling at each other in the hallway and rushed whispers in class, but nothing much since he left her house at ten a.m on that Saturday morning after a plate of burned pancakes.

“Oh, hey,” Hopper turns to her. They’re fresh out of English class, released early again after Mr Kennedy dropped his stick of chalk and accidentally swore loudly.

Hopper hadn’t noticed her much in the class, too busy trying to complete the chemistry assignment that had been screwed up at the bottom of his bag for weeks. But he’s looking at her now and he swears his heart almost stops at the sight of her red rimmed eyes, lined with dark rings, her unkempt hair, her chapped lips.

“Joyce?” Everyone around them ceases to matter as he lifts a hand to her shoulder, pulling her gently to the side of the hallway. Something’s very wrong.

“It’s fine. It’s _fine,_ ” she insists, lifting a shaking hand to angrily push a stray tear away.

“It’s _not_ fine. Jesus. What happened to you?” He hisses, not wanting to draw attention to them. He knows she hates that.

“I… I just… can we go somewhere?” She asks, voice unsteady, unsure, aching with sadness.

“Sure we can.” He’d go anywhere for her. In the middle of the night or a snowstorm or at the very end of the world.

He leads her outside, tugging gently on her wrist, walking her down the steps and then around underneath them. He pulls out his pack of camels, offers her one, and then lights both of them. She closes her eyes, takes a drag, leans back against the underside of the steps.

“What happened?” He asks, after minutes of deafening silence. A thousand terrible scenarios are unfolding in his mind, each one matching up to someone he can hit to make this better.

“Does it matter?” Joyce snaps, and she’s still shaking. He’s pretty sure it’s half from the cold.

“Of course it matters, Joyce,” he insists, anger boiling in his blood. Not at her, never at her. At whoever did _this._

“It… Lonnie and-”

“ _Lonnie_?” Lonnie was the first thing that had crossed Hopper’s mind when he’d seen Joyce like this, but he’d tried to push the thought away, not wanting to believe that the guy who was supposed to make her happy had caused this. “Where is he? Where is he now?”

“Hop, _don’t_ ,” Joyce reaches for his arm, as if afraid that he’s about to leave the shelter of the stairs and scour the earth for Lonnie.

“What did he do? Huh? What happened? Did he hurt you?” He’s trying to keep his voice calm, measured, but it’s impossible.

“No! He’d never hurt me,” Joyce protests, but Hopper isn’t quite convinced. Her fingers are still digging into his forearm like a lifeline. “We just fought. Last night, and it was _bad._ And now he’s not at school today, and I failed that _stupid_ history test, and I’m just so… so _tired_ of it all.” Something in her seems to snap, and she lets go of his arm and leans back against the wall, eyes scrunched shut.

“Hey,” he reaches for her, pulling her towards him gently, and then she’s dropping her cigarette and he’s dropping his and she’s stepping towards him, face buried in his chest, hands grasping at his jacket. His arms encircle her, rubbing soothing circles on her back.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, with a sigh.

“Don’t be. You have nothing to be sorry for,” he assures her, wishing there was something he could do, anything, to fix this. To see her infectious smile again.

“What did you fight about?” He asks, minutes of silence later.

“The future. School. Lisa Baker. I don’t know, just _everything_.” She pulls away from him, folding her arms and leaning back against the wall. “And then he just left.”

“He’s an _idiot_ Joyce, you know that? If he’s treating you like that, he’s an _idiot_.”

“Hop. He’s not an idiot,” she shakes her head.

“No? I’ll believe it when I see it.” He snaps, a little too fiercely. Joyce frowns and turns away from him, facing the schoolyard. Somewhere inside, the bell rings for sixth period, but neither one of them moves a muscle.

“It’s just chemistry,” Joyce echoes their conversation from October.

“Not like either of us is ever going to become a scientist,” Hopper snorts.

Then they’re stuck in the inbetween. Neither one of them wants to go to chemistry, but neither one of them is currently eager to run through the school hallways, dodging teachers until they make it out into the parking lot. So they stand there in the cold, beneath the steps, not saying a word.

In the end, Mr Cooper makes the decision for them. They’re six minutes late to class, if Hopper’s battered old watch with the worn leather strap is anything to go by, when they hear him yelling from across the yard. He’s marching a freshman towards the building with a rough grip on his arm, but he must catch sight of Joyce, leaning at the edge of their hideaway.

“Who is that under the steps? You’re late to class!” They hear the booming voice of Mr Cooper echoing towards them.

“ _Crap_ ,” Hopper rolls his eyes, picturing his dad’s reaction to yet another phone call from the school. It wouldn’t be pretty.

“C’mon!” Joyce is gesturing up the steps, and when Hopper hesitates for a split second too long she picks up his hand and sets off at a run.

Mr Cooper is yelling after them as they tear up the steps and into the building together, not stopping for anybody. They run past a confused looking junior with a hall pass, a secretary who doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that there are students running in the halls, and Mr Kennedy from English class whose shouts at them to stop are promptly ignored. They only stop when they’re out the front doors, around the corner, and diving into Hopper’s baby blue scratched-up car.

“Oh God,” Joyce laughs, and they’re looking at each other, adrenaline pumping through their veins, both smiling now. Hers infectious and bright, his mostly comprised of relief. Relief that they made it through the school without getting caught, relief that they aren’t currently sitting in the claustrophobic chemistry class, relief that Joyce is smiling and laughing and just _ok_. “Let’s get out of here,” she tears her gaze from him, looking out of the passenger side window instead.

“Where to?” He asks, starting the engine.

“Hmm,” she looks back at him, tapping her chin like she’s deep in thought. “What do you say we go start a new life together in the big city?” She asks, voice deathly serious. Her eyes are still red-rimmed, nails bitten, hair wild, and if he wasn’t so certain that she was joking right now, Hopper would agree without a moment’s hesitation. It’s scary, he thinks, what he’d do for her.

“Which city?” He asks, playing along, just for a moment.

“I don’t know. You pick.”

 

They wind up drinking milkshakes in the park, despite the fact that the radio presenter on Hopper’s car radio had announced that they were due their first snowfall of the year that night. His is vanilla, hers is chocolate, and they sit under a tree that’s lost almost all of its leaves. She steals his jacket and he steals her milkshake (he always regrets ordering vanilla) and he watches her tilting her face towards the weak winter sunlight and smiling like right now, in this bubble of the two of them, nothing else matters.

  


 

“Are you going to winter prom?” It’s one a.m, the Friday after the milkshakes in the park, after smoke breaks under the steps every day this week.

They’re at Alan’s, at the little last minute party he threw together in the ultra modern house his rich parents designed themselves. The ultra modern house with the accessible roof, that Joyce and Hopper are currently sitting atop, sharing a cigarette.

“Winter prom?” He frowns at her. She’s wearing a pretty black dress and faded lipstick and there’s something the colour of hope in her eyes.

“Yeah. It’ll be fun,” she insists, and Hopper isn’t a prom kind of guy, but with the right kind of people, anything can be fun. “Lisa would go with you if you asked her,” she says, looking away from him and taking a drag on the cigarette.

Hopper doesn’t want to ask Lisa. He doesn’t want to ask any girl, doesn’t want to spend the night staring across the room at Joyce.

“Heard from Lonnie?” Hopper asks, picking the cigarette out of Joyce’s grasp.

“Not since he stormed out of my house.” That’s the answer that Hopper expected, because he hasn’t seen Lonnie in class since last week, and he’s pretty sure that at this point, Joyce talking to Lonnie would be front page news, the first words she’d speak to Hopper upon seeing him.

“When is it?” He asks, out of interest more than anything.

“Winter prom?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Two weeks.”

He considers it, just for a minute. A lot can happen in two weeks. Lonnie could be back and they could be broken up, or he could be back and they could be firmly still together, rather than this grey area they seem to be in right now. Much of Hopper’s life, right now, is suspended in a grey area of undefined confusion. There’s the grey area between being a dumb teenager, allowed to make mistakes, slowly figuring things out, sleeping in on the weekend, and scraping a ‘c’ average in chemistry, and being an adult with a graduation picture in the hallway of his childhood home, a bunk and a gun assigned to him by the army. There’s the grey area of his English test, which he’s pretty sure he failed, but won’t know about until next Wednesday.

There’s the grey area of Joyce and _Hopper_ , because he tells himself every single day that nothing could ever happen between them, even if she didn’t have a grey-area-dwelling boyfriend. But that doesn’t stop the shared glances and cigarettes, doesn’t stop her from picking up his hand almost absent mindedly at every opportunity, doesn’t stop them from gravitating together at parties, doesn’t stop the weird feeling in his chest whenever she’s around, or the even weirder feeling when he realises that in six months they’re going to be hundreds of miles apart.

“You wanna just go with me? As friends?” Joyce asks, tired voice breaking through the quiet darkness.

The rooftop isn’t super high up, but it’s high enough to see a smattering of houses stretching their way down the hill. Most of them are dark, the residents sleeping or else not home. Hopper can see three with lights on, distant twinkling windows. Each one tells a different story. He knows that one of them is inhabited by Mr and Mrs Morley and tiny baby Annie, probably keeping her parents awake, the reason for the light. He wonders what it would be like, to stay in this town forever, never leaving, just like them.

Maybe he’ll come back some day, after he’s seen the world, settle down here with a family of his own, some faceless wife that he doesn’t even know yet. It’s a strange, melancholy feeling, to picture himself standing here, in Hawkins, the town looking the same, but him looking and feeling so different that there could be entire worlds filling the years between now and then. Whatever happens, he’s pretty sure it’s going to be without _her._ So maybe, right now, what he wants to do is cling to it, cling to these last few months of being in high school, of sharing smokes with her and holding her hand.

“I’d love to go with you,” he decides, handing her the cigarette.

  


 

Winter prom falls on a Friday night, two weeks later, and Joyce and Lonnie still aren’t on good terms. He came back for three days and during that time they had two more giant fights, so he left again, and Hopper spent all weekend with Joyce, drinking milkshakes and Christmas gift shopping and talking about nothing in particular on the mound of blankets and pillows on her bedroom floor. School is still arduous and dull but he got a ‘b’ in the English test he was certain he’d failed, and he survives on a steady diet of smiles exchanged with Joyce in the hallways and the music of her laughter under the steps, cigarettes in hand.

Hopper wears an honest to goodness _tie_ to the winter prom, the one his dad bought for him last year for his cousin Mary’s wedding, along with his favourite jeans and the wedding shirt, and when he knocks on Joyce’s front door to pick her up she answers straight away, like she’s been waiting there on the other side of the thick wood. She’s wearing a peach coloured dress with her hair in some complicated updo and it’s all tied together with the smile that, one day, is probably going to kill him.

“Shall we go?” She asks him, and she’s a world away from the sad girl with a cigarette and red rimmed eyes, or the girl sitting on her bedroom floor filled with so many anxieties that she’s struggling to breathe. Hopper knows every version of her, and loves them all the same.

“We shall.” He holds out his arm for her like they’re in a movie and walks her to his car, past the flickering Christmas lights on her front gate that she must have strung up herself.

“You look fancy,” she says, settling into the passenger seat and looking across at him.

“Speak for yourself,” he shakes his head at her.

“Want to know a secret?” She asks, in an almost-whisper.

“What?” He uses the same level of volume.

“I stole this from the back of my mom’s closet,” she confesses, like it’s the worst thing she’s ever done. Hopper gasps, clapping a hand over his mouth, an appropriate reaction to her tone. “Stop it,” she pushes him, “it’s not like she ever dresses up nice.”

“Oh, so that makes it alright? You’re not using your purse right now, should I just take all the money you have inside it? That fancy lipstick I saw you put in there?” He reaches for it, on the floor of his car, and she pushes him harder, laughing, trying to pull her purse out of his grip when he reaches it.

And then the energy in the car changes, their faces are inches apart, the centre console in the way of them being closer without actively _trying_ to be closer. Joyce’s eyes are wide open, and if it was brighter in here Hopper’s pretty sure he’d be able to see his reflection in her pupils, the same surprised uncertainty written all over his own face. She’s biting her lower lip, getting that fancy lipstick on her teeth, and she smells like peppermint and the small silver bottle of perfume in her bathroom that he knows for a fact is her mom’s. Maybe he’s imagining it, but it feels like she’s leaning in a little, tilting her head to one side, and maybe, just maybe, he’s doing the same and ignoring all of the warning signs lit up in flashing neon in his head.

The first time Hopper kissed a girl he was nine years old, standing behind the biggest tree out back of Hawkins Elementary and hiding from the principal. Her name had been Elizabeth and she was a year older and he spent the rest of the day feeling like the coolest kid in the whole school or in the whole of Hawkins or Indiana or the world.

The last time he had kissed a girl was over the summer, at someone’s pool party, and her name had been Chrissy and they’d been this weird undefined _thing_ for months, but she lived one town over and after that pool party everything just kind of fizzled out. He hasn’t thought about her in months and if he did, he’d realise that he never even missed her.

Those kisses are the bookends, as it stands right now, with tens of others sitting in the middle. And none of them have ever felt like this. This is a racing heart and sparks like lightning, all consuming, a precipice before a moment that’s going to change everything if they let it.

(They don’t let it.) They’re one second away, if that, from pressing their lips together, from starting something that neither of them has a name for yet, and then a car whizzes by and they snap out of it. It’s stupid, really, that something so insignificant as another car going past could stop them. A sign that maybe this whole thing isn’t meant to be, Hopper thinks. If the driver of that car had left home a minute later, maybe things would have ended differently. Lost keys, a forgotten wallet, engine trouble in the cold weather. Any of them might have changed things.

Hopper clears his throat loudly, “so, should we go?” He sits back in his seat, fishing his car key from his pocket.

“Yep, yeah. Winter prom,” Joyce nods, tucking a few stray strands of hair behind her ear.

Hopper starts the car, takes a breath, and then drives away. Joyce rests her forehead against the passenger window.

 

 

It takes twelve minutes to drive from Joyce’s house to Hawkins high school, where the gym is lit up and alive with giggly teenagers and exhausted teachers. The first half of the drive is awkward, the space between them filled with a thick silence. Sparks of angry electricity from faulty wiring. Not the electricity of lightning hitting the tallest tower in a city. The second half of the drive is made entirely better by Joyce’s favourite song coming onto the radio, Hopper turning it up, and the two of them turning to each other and smiling. By the time Hopper pulls into a parking spot by the side of the school, they’re talking about whether or not Molly and Benny are going to work out as a couple beyond prom, or whether Benny only asked her because she’s pretty.

“Maybe it’s the start of something,” Joyce muses, tilting her head to one side.

“But probably not,” Hopper counters. Neither one of them is making any kind of move to get out of the car, to enter the prom and get lost amongst their friends.

It’s the grey area all over again, between this comfortable bubble of the two of them in his car, and getting lost amongst their friends inside the gym. This grey area, this waiting to see if something is going to happen between them, neither one wanting to commit to confirmation or denial. Like they’re at the end of a long path. Their friendship, for these past years, has been a path from waist-high weeds to running down a mountain trail so fast that you barely stop to feel your feet touch the earth. It’s stretched from a stroll by a quiet river to _this_ , to what it is now. To a well-trodden path under a burning sunset, the soil firm but forgiving under your boots, the route familiar enough that you know when the sun goes down, you’ll have no trouble finding your way back home.  

“We should probably go in,” Joyce says, not sounding particularly happy about it.

“I guess,” he agrees, because it’s senior year and there’s never going to be another chance to go to winter prom. So driving back to the milkshake place right now isn’t the best idea.

“Thanks for doing this, Hop,” she tells him, catching his eye, reaching out to squeeze his hand.

“What?”

“Coming to winter prom with me. Helping me deal with all of this. Just being there,” she says, voice soft.

“That’s what friends do,” he shrugs, and they’re looking at each other in that intense way again that is definitely not reserved for _friends_.

Then there’s a tap on the passenger side window, and all of it comes crashing down around them.

“Joyce!” It’s Molly, tapping and smiling excitedly, persisting until Joyce rolls down the window.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re coming in now,” Joyce tells her, turning back to look at Hopper.

“I guess her date with Benny isn’t going so well,” he mumbles to her, low enough that Molly can’t hear. Joyce bites back a smile.

“No, Joyce, you don’t understand, you have to come _now_ ,” Molly insists.

“Alright, alright,” Joyce reaches down to pick up her purse.

“It’s Lonnie,” Molly adds. Joyce freezes, Hopper’s blood turns to ice.

“Lonnie?” Joyce asks, as if she barely dares to believe it.

“Yeah! He’s here with a huge bouquet of roses, for _you._ And he came to find us, looking for you, he told us how sorry he is about fighting with you, how he was wrong and he’s going to be better now.” Molly pauses, turning around to look at something. Hopper follows her gaze and finds Benny looking around the corner, leaning against the wall and waiting for Molly. “Joyce, the guy _loves you._ ”

“He… he loves me?” Joyce chokes. “Then… why isn’t he out here”

“Because I said I’d come find you, now let’s _go_ ,” Molly insists, gesturing st the building and walking over to where Benny stands in its shadow.

“I-” Joyce turns around to face Hopper, and for the first time he can see the expression on her face. It’s one of confusion and surprise, but _happy_ confusion and surprise, like she thought she was going over to her friend’s house to study, but she just walked into a surprise party.

Hopper’s mouth has gone dry, his heart plummeted to the fancy shoes that give him blisters. It’s dumb, he knows that, but since she’d asked him to come to the prom with her it had occupied far too many of his thoughts. He’d been thinking about sharing smokes in the parking lot, about making her laugh, about standing in a circle with all of their friends in the gym and talking about nothing in particular but everything that mattered, about the customary slow dance at the end of the night, and the after party at Benny’s house.

“I’m not gonna go in there,” Joyce shakes her head, wrinkling her nose a little.

And it kills Hopper more than her smile ever could, because he’s replaying the way she said ‘ _he loves me’_ like she could barely believe it, like it was the most wonderfully unattainable thing in the universe. He’s realising that he’s let himself believe they were something they aren’t. That sharing cigarettes and holding hands and falling asleep next to each other doesn’t make for a relationship.

“I’m here with you,” she says, sounding worryingly close to tears. “We- we were gonna…” she trails off, looks at her shoes.

“Do you _wanna_ go in there?” He asks, watching a spectrum of emotions overtake her face.

“ _No._ I… I don’t know? Lonnie’s great, he’s sweet, he… maybe he loves me? But he hurt me, he was an _idiot_. You were right about that,” she laughs once, humourless.

Hopper sits back and lets her figure out. It’s the final grey area, where one path takes them to the milkshake place and a universe full of possibilities, and the other path stops right here, with her walking away. He’s going to make damned sure that she picks whichever option is going to make her the happiest.

“This feels like… a last chance. For me and him,” she tells Hopper, eyes swimming with tears now. He realises, all at once, that it’s not about her picking an option which is going to make her the happiest. It’s about which one is going to leave her heart the most whole, which one is going to hurt her the least, which one causes the least collateral damage.

“Ok. Ok, so you go in there, and you give the idiot this one last chance. And if he breaks your heart again you do what’s best for you and you walk out of there. Got it?” He talks her through it, and she scrabbles for his hands with her own, lacing their fingers together again.

He’s fourteen and they’re hiding behind the gym and skipping math class together, he’s fifteen and it’s the summer and they’re swimming in someone’s pool at midnight, he’s sixteen and she falls asleep on his shoulder in English class, he’s seventeen and it’s fall and he’s talking her through a panic attack on her bedroom floor, he’s seventeen and it’s winter and he’s standing in the woods surrounded by smashed ceramics and she’s the only thing keeping him connected to the earth.

He’s eighteen and sitting in his baby blue car outside of the winter prom and he’s going to watch her walk in and maybe Lonnie is the one she’s going to grow old with. Maybe they’ll get married and buy a pretty house and have babies with her eyes and his hair and she’ll never be sad again. But maybe not. It doesn’t matter right now, because she’s leaning her forehead against his shoulder and whatever happens, this feels like goodbye.

“Got it,” she nods determinedly at him, lips pressed into a thin line. “But what about _you_?” She asks, squeezing his hands tighter.

“Me? You don’t need to worry about me,” he tells her, smiling softly and trying to ignore the fact that everything feels kind of like it’s unravelling. He’s fine. He’s _good_. He’s Jim Hopper and he’s unshakeable, he’s always going to be ok.

“I can stay. Stay here with you,” she suggests again, and he wants to tell her yes, never wants to let go of her hands.

“Nah,” he shakes his head, “go make Lonnie apologise for everything he’s done. And if he starts another fight with you, I’ll make sure it’s the last one,” Hopper promises.

Joyce looks at him for a long moment, eyes swimming with tears, both of them feeling, inexplicably, like something has changed, come to an end. And then Joyce reclaims her hands from him and throws them around his neck, drawing him as close as she can.

“ _Thank you_ ,” she whispers.

“No need,” he replies, wrapping his own arms around her, breathing in the scent of her mom’s perfume.

And then she’s leaving, extracting her arms, picking up her purse, opening the car door and climbing out. The cold December air finds its way in.

“Are you coming?” She asks, looking at him expectantly.

“Uh, yeah. In a minute,” he lies, running a hand through his hair. “I’m just gonna-” he reaches for his pack of camels, holding them up and shaking them.

“Oh. Ok,” she casts one last, suspicious look at him, and then she’s closing the door with a bang.

Hopper lights a cigarette, closing his eyes as he takes the first drag, and then wrenches them open to watch her walk away in the rear view mirror. She stops at the corner, turns back, and raises one hand in goodbye.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @jakelovesamy


End file.
